Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.

No grace can save any man unless he helps himself.

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.

Any man can work when every stroke of his hands brings down the fruit rattling from the tree ... but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement... that requires a heroism which is transcendent.

Before men we stand as opaque bee-hives. They can see the thoughts go in and out of us; but what work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. Before God we are as glass bee-hives, and all that our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees and understands.

Go on your knees before God. Bring all your idols; bring self-will, and pride, and every evil lust before Him, and give them up. Devote yourself, heart and soul, to His will; and see if you do not "know of the doctrine.

Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion.